Activist newspaper sues FBI over wrongful computer raid

The EFF has filed a lawsuit against the FBI and Alameda County on behalf of a …

The FBI, Alameda County, and the Regents of the University of California are named in a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) on behalf of two activist groups near Berkeley who were recently the targets of a law enforcement raid. The organizations—the East Bay Prisoner Support Group (EBPS) and an independent bookstore and library called Long Haul—claim that their computers and records were wrongfully seized. They are asking the court for injunctive and declaratory relief.

The two organizations were raided in August last year after Detective William Kasiske obtained a warrant from the Alameda Superior Court. The EFF contends that the warrant, which authorized the search of Long Haul's offices, was granted improperly because the Detective failed to establish probable cause or produce evidence demonstrating specific wrongdoings by Long Haul. The raid of the EBPS offices on the first floor of the building were unlawful, the EFF says, because the warrant did not name EBPS at all or grant police the authority to search the group.

Officers from the University of California, Berkeley police department forcibly entered the premises when they were denied access by the landlord. Several members of the Long Haul organization arrived at the scene during the middle of the raid, but the police offers refused to show them the warrant.

The exact purpose of the raid has not been disclosed. Law enforcement agents believe that one of the computers that is accessible for use by the general public in Long Haul's library was used to perpetrate a crime of some kind. The police confiscated a large volume of records, including library book lending records, and took every computer in the building—not just the two computers that were publicly accessible. They also seized materials from Long Haul's private offices, where the organization stores the documents and research materials that they use for an independent publication that they produce and distribute to the public.

The EFF maintains that the seizure of documents that were being prepared for imminent publication is particularly egregious because it violates the federal Privacy Protection Act. And Long Haul contends that the private office in their facility that was used for the newspaper was unmistakably marked as such, and should not have been ransacked.

"The Slingshot and EBPS computers were clearly marked and kept behind locked doors," said EFF Civil Liberties Director Jennifer Granick in a statement. "Yet the raid officers broke into the offices to take information these organizations collected and relied on to publish information to their readership. This is a blatant violation of federal law and the First and Fourth Amendments, interfering with the freedom of the press."

The equipment that was seized has been returned, but the members of Long Haul and EBPS fear that the police have retained copies of all the data. They seek a judicial declaration affirming that the raid was unconstitutional and a permanent injunction to block law enforcement agents from conducting further investigations with the collected data.

This case goes to the very heart of the EFF's values. The organization was founded in the aftermath of an infamous and outrageously misguided raid conducted by the Secret Service against Steve Jackson Games in the early 90s. The EFF has sought to protect citizens from unlawful raids and to set precedents that will raise the legal standards for search and seizure so that civil liberties won't crumble as technology becomes more pervasive. Much like the original SJG case, the EFF wants to make sure that a vague suspicion of wrongdoing isn't used to justify an unconstrained fishing expedition in private data.